Africa-Press – Tanzania. TAIFA Stars striker Simon Msuva said criticisms they get from the football fraternity via social media outlets simply make them perform stronger in the competitive games.
Msuva (pictured) emerged the country’s hero in the just completed 2022 World Cup qualifiers after scoring four decisive goals which helped Stars to finish the race with 8points.
He first netted a vital goal against Burundi to drive Stars into the group stage of the World Cup qualifiers and he levelled the scoreboard versus Democratic Republic of Congo to force a 1-1 draw with hosts in Lubumbashi.
Again, Msuva scored an important away goal to defeat Benin 1-0 before firing home an opening goal versus Madagascar in their final game of the qualifiers. Apart from netting goals, according to the statistics compiled by the Tanzania Football Federation (TFF), Msuva created a total of 13 chances and had 29 shots more than any player in Stars jersey.
His counterpart Mohamed Hussein had a total of 314 passes while Novatus Dismas produced 37 tackles and skipper Mbwana Samatta recorded 34 dribbles throughout the six matches.
However, speaking in Dar es Salaam recently, Msuva pointed out that criticisms to them are just part of their job, saying they cannot perform at the same level all the time.
“As a player, you need to accept criticisms because those who criticise you today, they will applaud you tomorrow hence you just need to think of performing better after a poor match you had. “We get hurt from the words of people but you cannot decide to quit playing just because of what people are saying. When you are being said negatively, it means people have seen that you have potential, so show it to them,” said the Wydad Casablanca player.
He added being placed in group J together with DR Congo, Benin and Madagascar was a good thing to them because they deserve to play with great teams to show their maturity.
“Most of the teams we faced in the qualifiers are ranked better on FIFA rankings as such; it was a good thing for us to show them what we are capable of doing and as you saw, our performance was above average,” he said.
Commenting on why they performed better in away games than those played at home, Msuva replied that there was no other reason to describe that other than just be part of the game.” It happens that sometimes, you win away games and lose home matches. All these are parts of the game but we always want to do well at home to make our fans happy,” he said.
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